Buy Call of Juarez: The Cartel

About This Game

Welcome to the new Wild West.
This first-person shooter brings the lawlessness of the Old West into present day. You’ll embark on a bloody road trip from Los Angeles to Juarez, Mexico immersing yourself in a gritty plot with interesting characters and a wide variety of game play options.
Experience the lawlessness of the modern wild west as you hunt down the Mendoza cartel in a world where the ends justify the means. Your hunt for the Cartel boss takes you on an epic road trip from a meth lab in the Sequoia national forest to the Cartel headquarters in Ciudad Juarez. With over 10 distinct environments including urban LA brothels and back streets, gritty boat docks, a swanky yacht party, the open deserts in Arizona and New Mexico, a Mexican funeral and more.

Key Features:

*NEW* CO-OPETITION GAME PLAY

Partner with 2 other teammates to achieve joint objectives, while sneaking behind their back to advance your secret personal agenda. Play the 20-mission campaign mode solo or with up to 3 friends Triple the replay value: Play the entire campaign with each of the 3 characters; each character has their own unique story and distinct ending.
FUN MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCE

Play up to 6 vs 6 in Team Death Match and Cops vs Gangsters. As you play, your character will evolve, unlocking weapons and gear.
RICH STORY COMBINED WITH GAME PLAY VARIETY

Relevant character-driven story that unfolds differently depending on which character you play. Game play is driven by variety: Punitive raids, witness protection, tough interrogations, undercover missions, shootings in crowd, car chases and more Choose between 30 weapons including pistols, revolvers, sub machine guns, machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, anti air weapons and more.

Even though I'm giving it a thumbs up, I have mixed feelings about this game. The Cartel is the worst game in the Call of Juarez series, but it does have a few features that other games in the series (and even many co-op FPS games in general) don't have and make this game unique and somehow enjoyable to play. I would recommend this, but only when it's heavily discounted and you've got one or two friends to play in co-op with.

PROS

+ Good campaign mode with epic storyline, 4 endings and amazing soundtrack.+ Co-op mode.+ Replayable: 3 playable characters each with their own objectives, perspectives, roles and different dialogues (e.g. talking with different characters on the cellphone). The storyline is character-driven so it may vary based on what character you're playing with.+ Car chases+ Random challenges mid-game (e.g. kill X enemies before the other players). It kinda kills the teamwork sometimes but I find it to be a nice addition.+ Great variety of guns and configurable FoV (look in the Steam community guides)

CONS

- The main menu and the first levels are dull (luckily the game gets slightly better and more interesting afterwards).- Technically horrible: graphics are worse than its predecessors and graphical glitches are not missing. Buggy, and audio could have been better.- Lack of options.- Gunplay is monotonous and annoying blur when aiming down sight.- Car driving physics could have been better.- No drop-in joining (players can only join your co-op match at the start of a level).- Enemies are 100% accurate and grenades are useless.- Multiplayer deathmatch is nothing special.

Personal rating: 5.8/10

If only Techland had more time to develop this and made it primarly for PC it could have been a stunning game; it has co-op, the features mentioned in the pros are cool and the story is top notch, but the rest is heavily unpolished.Tip before you play: don't tell your friends what your *personal* objectives are, what items you steal and what dialogues your character hears.

Call of Juarez is a western-themed FPS game series released by Ubisoft. The Cartel is the "odd one out" in this series as it is the only one taking place in a modern day setting instead of the good old Wild West. Interestingly, the concept works and it makes for a good - albeit somewhat mediocre - game that fans can feel free to pick up as it becomes, after all, an important part of the franchise.

The game is best played cooperatively. For some reason the developer decided to pick not two (remember Bound In Blood?) but 3 protagonists. When playing alone they are controlled by the A.I but they are not exactly sharpshooters; however, the upside here is that you do not need to revive any of them.

They all work for a different organisation serving their country - Ben is an LAPD cop (he wears a cowboy hat and his surname indicates he is the descendant of Ray McCall from the 1st game), Kim is from the FBI and Eddie represents the DEA. They are all after The Cartel and during gameplay each of them receives a phone call asking them to complete a secondary objective. This is pretty funny as with each player you are to pick up various things and the rest cannot know about it. If noticed, you lose the opportunity. These are all illegal activities (such as stealing money) as to a certain degree all of them are dirty.

There are some driving sequences, too. One player drives while the rest do the shooting. The mechanics are similar to the one experienced in Dead Island (another Techland game series): it is pretty easy to navigate but the camera is positioned behind the dashboard so you do not exactly have the chance to change the view. There's also levelling up that unlocks newer and more powerful weapons throughout the game but it is pretty generic. Multiplayer is also available and while it does not offer anything new it is pretty entertaining.

Like I said this is the odd one out in the series but it does not mean it is a bad game. At the time (2011) the Chrome engine already looked outdated and while there is a handful of cinematics the game's story is not exactly very original. Still, The Cartel is an entertaining game and if you liked Call of Juarez you might get fond of this, too.

Just remember: beside McCall's character and the slow-mo shootouts and the available revolvers nothing really makes you remember its predecessors. Perhaps it's best to wait for a discount so as not to be disappointed very much.

This game is not as bad as everyone says it is. But it is one of the worst sequels of all time.

I love the Call of Juarez franchise: the first one was good, "Bound in Blood" was great and "Gunslinger" is a fantastic FPS. But where does "The Cartel" stand?

The story starts in a very mediocre way, following a police officer, a DEA officer and a FBI agent as they try to bring down the Mexican Cartel's operations in Los Angeles. The first levels are as dull as they can get, but as time goes on, there are multiple scenarios that are quite engaging: car chases through cities, shootouts in rainy docks...The only link to the other CoJ games are the police officer (a relative of Ray McCall) and some levels set in Juarez.

The gameplay is really mediocre: the guns are recoil-less and they feel all the same. There isn't the dynamic cover like in "Bound In Blood", and the special ability is your typical bullet-time. The three characters are identical, if not for tiny little differences (again, unlike "Bound In Blood"): McCall has more accuracy with pistols, DEA with shotguns, FBI with rifles.

The graphics are okay, but the worst parts are the FOV that can't be changed and the Depth of Field that works like ♥♥♥ (and can't be turned off). The Graphic Options are piss poor (unlike "Bound in Blood" xD), but you will get used to these issues after a while (2 hours max).

Overall, this game is a really bad sequel, and definitely worse compared to "Bound In Blood". However, the action setpieces, great voice acting and longevity.

Bought this for the cooperative mode. Turns out even the coop mode couldn't bring back any replay value. Is this is a broken game? Well, it's not entirely broken but it's not a good game either. I had 1 playthrough and I felt like deleting it off from my HDD. Unfortunately, I wanted to get Upoints from for completing all of the character's campaign. It was suffering since all of their campaign were pretty much playing the same levels again.

The good thing is that each character has their own perspective view. For instance, when your character is on the call, you can hear the conversation while others can't. This applies to coop mode where your friends can't hear what you're listening from your phone call. Let's get straight to the point.

The graphics is awful. It's very blurry. When you aim, anything apart from your center of your aiming scope gets blurred. Sometimes when the enemies are running around and your aim focused on the tree, everything gets blurry. It's hard to aim at the enemies. Using the directX 11 doesn't seems to have any difference. This game graphics is bad.

I gave the sound average is because of the voice acting. Anything else felt like low quality sound effects. Your gun sound effects doesn't feel powerful. The soundtrack isn't memorable. At least they tried to use back the cowboy soundtrack. Very weak in this department.

Gameplay is just a typical shooter game but feels very boring. You have multiple car chase, multiple gunfights and multiple enemy chasing on foot. Yes, they are repeating those same events through the 3 campaigns. It gets buggy like enemy pop out of no where. Enemies disappearing. The game gets broken where the event doesn't start. As for gunfight, you fight 4-5 enemies, then done, next area, 3-4 enemies, then move on, 3-4 enemies again. Very repetitive and very boring gunfight. Even in coop, it's nothing interesting about this except the challenge like who gets the 1st 5 headshots within the time limit. There are some other challenges but it's just competing with your friends That's it, nothing else. For public game, good luck finding one.

Story is about the corruptions. The only reason you want to replay is because you wanted to know everyone's perspective. There are multiple ending as well. I spent so many hours on this game is because of that and the U points. Nothing much to say about this.

I can't recommend this game as it is very weak. I got this game from promotion sale so I don't get much loss.

This game is....well to be generous....quickly thrown together and lacking in story, graphics, gameplay quality. Really wouldnt recommend spending any more than a dollar on this. And do not think that it will be anything like gunslinger, which in my opinion was an amazing title.

Let me start by saying I really do enjoy this game, it really isn't as bad as the reviews say. However, I completely and fully say do not bother with it on Steam. The uPlay is absolutely awful, and the game refuses to play on every computer I have tested it on (and I am FAR above even the recommended settings.) After attempting to start new game, the game crashes and you are taunted with a "Thank you for playing Call of Juarez: The Cartel" window from ubisoft. ♥♥♥♥ those guys, and ♥♥♥♥ this game on steam.

Oh, and ♥♥♥♥ the censorship here, you can eat a ♥♥♥♥, censorship you punk ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥a

Weak link in Call of Juarez series. Why modern world? Ubisoft attempted to make this game like Call Of Duty but messed it allright. Finally understood its mistake and a miracle born; Gunslinger. Play Call of Juarez, Bound in Blood, Gunslinger and ignore this one.

I don't get all the hate and bad reputation this poor game has earned.

Sure, it isn't a Call of Juarez like the two before, or.. a Call of Juarez at all, as the only things in common are a guy called McCall, a trip to Juarez in a couple of stages, and the bullet-time which isn't as good as in the previous titles.

It wasn't ported perfectly on PC, that's true. You almost can't set up the graphics at all, there's a motion blur and a depth blur that can be annoying, but you'll get used to them pretty soon.But for the rest? It's a simple action fps like tons of others, with badass characters "maxpayneing" their way against an army of bad dudes, a lot of gunfightings, explosions, car pursuits, a story that's maybe a bit confusing but overall good, great voice acting, the same easy controls as every fps...

It may not be the most original fps of all times, it's very linear and doesn't allow you to explore anything, but.. who cares? It's fast paced, funny and entertaining for all its length, and never bored me.

bad boys, bad boys... whatcha ya gonna do? what you gonna do when they come for you?... The game was very entertaining to play, since I love "Bad Boys", old westerns, car chases with gunfire, room entry in slo-mo while you take down a bandit with a precise headshot. It's really fun to play, and it could've been better if it had no bugs.

The Call of Juarez franchise should've stopped with the first one, which was plain bad! But then Bound in Blood changed my mind! But then The Cartel appeared and strenghtened my first feeling! But then Gunslinger appeared and gave me that nice nostalgic feel of the 2nd one! Boy, those are a lot of "But then"s :PAnyways, The Cartel Is an average FPS that lets you play as 1 of the 3 agents at your choice, each one with it's unique abilities (but those abilities/skills are pretty boring, like faster reload for pistols with one guy, the other reloads faster with SMGs and can Dual-Wield them and the female agent reloads rifles faster, aaaand that is it...)Going to the graphics, they are below average, bad texture pop-ins here and there and offline lag! YES! The campaign lags when you play (framerate drops and lag, actually), when you run to be specific, same issue that I had previously with Dead Island (same engine BTW).Character models are just awful and the dialogue is f*cking laughable.Gameplay wise, the guns all feel pretty much the same, and they all feel bad! Except the pistols, so I just used the pistols the whole game, except during Concentration mode (slows down time and increases accuracy for a short period of time) that you get by killing people, and also used rifles and smg's during the car shootout and car chases, because pistol kind of suck in those situations. There are also pretty ugly bugs here and there and some glitches, but Techland just doesn't give a sh*it and instead of patching it up, they just decided to move on to another sh*tty project called Dead Island: Riptide, and that worked out pretty well, didn't it? Huh...Multiplayer is your standard rack up kills, get XP, new level, YAY! Here's a new ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapon, have a blast!Noone plays it anymore btw, so if you want to get it, buy for the SP Campaign (with a bad story as well, pretty bad and nonsensical and uninteresting and many more bad adjectives) which is decently long (around 7 to 8 hours) and the collectibles are an interesting mechanic as well as they work like side missions and you kind of have to do it discretely so that the other 2 agents don't catch you. It makes things a bit more tense and spices up things, making the campaign interesting enough until the end.Co-Op is also pretty fun with friends. It's a standard 3 player maximum co-op mode where each plays one of the in-game characters.There isn't much more to approach to this game but an extra fly in the soup: an extra DRM known as Games for Windows Li...AH! Just joking! It does NOT use GFWL, thankfully, but it does use UPlay, which is Ubisoft's DRM for their games, I haven't had any huge issues with this DRM, it's just annoying but I can live with it...it doesn't deserve more than a 4.5/10, save you 10 € for something better like Kane & Lynch 2 or Counter Strike: Global Offensive.I paid 4,99€ at a retail shop for this and honestly, I feel like it was worth it, but don't pay much more than that...

An extremely mediocre offering and I write this as a RABID Call of Juarez and all things western fan. I went into this looking for even a schlocky B-movie sort of good time after purchasing it on sale and I had to muster a LOT of courage to make it through to the end. Disappointing gunplay, terrible driving segments, paper thin characters and plotting, only play it if you're desperate for a gritty crime shooter and you've literally played everything else on your backlog. A huge disappointment. The series was thankfully put back on track with Gunslinger and I expect great things from Techland regarding the future of the franchise. But this one?

Call of Juarez: The Cartel drops the best appeal of the original by dropping the western theme, instead offering a mediocre modern day themed story where you control horribly written "bad cop" characters. If you're looking for a good western game, don't touch The Cartel, instead check out the original or CoJ: Gunlisnger among others.

Judged by its own merits this game still lacks everything to be enjoyable - movement, gunplay and gameplay in general are below average. You might laugh once or twice the things the character says in concentration mode but overall this game offers nothing of interest. It also has a multiplayer mode which no one plays. It's a below average, janky and generic shooter and it's easy to see why it tarnished the Call of Juarez name at the time of its release.

Alright, all of the problems asside, slow frame rate, cheap difficulty, bad voice recording and buggy gameplay...Those things could have been forgiven if there was some substance to the story line that might tip the scales in this games favour...but there isn't even that. For some reason, it had to be made "hip" and set in modern day LA, where the previous games were set mainly in boarder towns between the southern USA and Mexico...The McCall brothers have been replaced by a DEA agent, an FBI agent and a street cop sergeant who looks like he was the attempt to rip off Ray McCall in modern day but fails in every way. I haven't gotten ALL the way through the game yet but even after nine hours of gameplay I've heard no mention of anything linking this to the previous two except for a last minute entry great grand son that the previous games never supported. There's not a mention of the gold of Juarez, or the town, or really anything to do with what the game is labeled about THE CALL OF JUAREZ...there's not any mention of the treasure let alone those who go mad searching for it. I'm not normally one to completely can a game unless there's nothing redeemable about it, and (I might not have played it enough, but) there is nothing redeemable about this title at all, I don't care about the characters, the story isn't engaging and the gameplay is broken and the sound design is well below sub-par...Play Call of Juarez, Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood and/or Call of Juarez - Gunslinger, and call those a trilogy, but avoid this one at all costs.

Alright I just want to explain what I think about this game, Horrible voice acting, Didn't like dead island engine, Gameplay is horrid and the game is just...bad...if you want to play a REAL Call of Juarez then get Gunslinger or Bound in Blood not this piece of crap, thanks for your time and I hope this review helped you.

This was a terrible game. The point is that you have 3 protagonists who follow the main story but have unique side objectives. Although this is a good idea in theory (3 different games), they mostly just follow the same damn story and the only difference is what items you steal and the phone calls you get. Not worth 3 replays (not even 1). The story is hideously complicated with 3 different motivations and a ♥♥♥♥ ton of characters that you don't care about that it all merges together into crap. The levels are very linear and the weapon choices don’t really matter at all.

The only pros are that the controls are pretty good and the cover does shred forcing you to move. Other than that, the game is bad